


Walls Growing, Ever Thicker Ever Higher

by donutsweeper



Category: The Haunting of Hill House (TV 2018)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Introspection, Missing Scene, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 07:08:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17039102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/donutsweeper/pseuds/donutsweeper
Summary: The knock that came in the middle of the night was one that Theo had been expecting for years. What Shirley had come to tell her however? That threw her for a loop.





	Walls Growing, Ever Thicker Ever Higher

**Author's Note:**

  * For [templeandarche](https://archiveofourown.org/users/templeandarche/gifts).



The knock that came in the middle of the night was one that Theo had been expecting for years, decades even. As Shirley stood there, looking completely broken and devastated as she first apologized and then struggled to find the right words to say whatever she'd come to say, Theo ran through various possibilities and scenarios in her mind. Luke had OD'ed; Luke had crashed a car while driving under the influence and killed someone; Luke had skipped out of rehab and been mugged or had gotten arrested while trying to score; Luke was in the hospital; Luke was dead. 

Luke. Luke. Luke. 

She’d prepared herself for news along those lines and had resigned herself to the inevitability of it to the point that when Shirley finally opened her mouth and said, “It’s Nell,” for a moment Theo just froze because she didn’t, couldn’t, comprehend what she was being told. Nell? What the hell did she mean, Nell? What about Nell?

First she thought she'd misheard. Then she assumed there'd been some kind of accident or Nell had been struck down by some kind of sudden and terrible, but unpreventable, medical thing along the lines of what had happened to Arthur. It would have been hard, but Theo could have accepted that. Understood that. But then Shirley told her the rest of what she knew. Nellie had killed herself and not only that, she had done it at Hill House.

Suicide? Nell was messed up, sure, there was no doubt about that. They all were to one extent or another, how could they not be after mom died the way she had? Becoming a widow at such a young age had been ridiculously rough on Nell as well and, if Theo was honest about it, she hadn’t been as supportive as she could have been the last time they saw each other. Hell, when it came right down to it she’d been almost cruel. Nell had come to her for help and Theo had thrown it back in her face instead of trying to understand. But still....

Her gut twisted and screamed at the thought. Suicide. Nell wouldn’t have done that. Not Nell. And not at that fucking house.

A part of her, the same part that had always been bracing for that inevitable news about Luke, had been waiting for Hill House to come for one of them someday, but for some reason she never thought it'd go after Nell. Steve was the one who'd written the book, splashing his vision and version of its secrets for the whole world to read about. He'd gotten a lot of them wrong, sure, but still, if it was going to lash out at anyone it would have made sense if it had been him. She also had half expected it that it might have been her; she'd seen so much there, not only through her own experiences but also what she'd gotten through the others by her being 'sensitive' and having learned things through a touch here and there. Sometimes she thought she'd never quite be free of the place. But Nell? No, she'd never considered that Nellie would become another of its victims.

She should have though; thinking on it she realized it had always been the most interested in the twins. They'd almost lost Nell to it the night of that terrible storm when somehow she'd slipped from Theo's own hand between one second and the next and Theo had been the one to send Luke straight into its bowels in that dumbwaiter, terrifying him. And then there had been whatever those two had witnessed that last night there. Neither spoke of it much, but why would they? How many times had they complained that summer that no one ever believed them? Luke and Nell had warned the rest of them about the monsters in that house and their fears were dismissed again and again and they were told by mom, by dad, by _everyone_ that they were letting their imaginations run wild and that it was just a house.

But Nell had known better. 

Theo was certain that Nell had believed Hill House was haunted or cursed or just plain evil back then and continued to believe that as the years went by. Which was why Nell damn well knew better than to go there and tempt it and she certainly fucking knew better than to kill herself because she knew, she _knew_ what kind of gaping hole a death like that could and would leave in a family and Theo couldn't believe Nell would do that to any of them, let alone to Luke.

Oh, fuck, Luke.

Those two had always been in each other's heads, inexorably intertwined in ways she could never understand, in ways neither she nor Steve nor Shirley could ever hope to understand. What the fuck was this going to do to Luke?

Gesturing Shirley inside, it was all she could do was not slam the door behind her as she asked, "Why the _hell_ would she go to that house?"

"I don't know."

"What do you mean you don't know?"

"Because I. Don't. Know." Shirl sounded one step away from losing it so Theo led her to the bed to sit down, grabbing a bottle from the liquor cabinet on the way. "Steve called and we spoke for maybe three, four minutes tops? Dad's the one who told him—"

"And if Steve got what he knew from dad of course he couldn't say much," Theo muttered, offering Shirley a drink. "He wouldn't be _able_ to say much."

"Right, because dad never fucking tells anyone anything." She took a quick swig before handing it back to Theo. "So then I called dad. It was a really shitty connection since he was on the road so we didn't talk long. I asked him for details, but he didn't have much more information, or if he did, he didn't tell me."

"How unsurprising. Did he have _anything_ to say?"

"Just that Mrs. Dudley was the one who found her. That's all he said, that Nell was dead and Mrs. Dudley was the one who found her because Nell went to Hill House and…." she trailed off, making a vague fluttery motion.

"Killed herself. Jesus fuck." Neither of them seemed to know what to say after that and they just passed the bottle back and forth. The silence stretched between them until it became uncomfortable and awkward. What the fuck, Nell. What. The. Fuck.

Shirley curled in on herself as they sat there, appearing more unsure and broken than Theo could remember seeing her. Theo considered reaching out and comforting her, but then looked down at her hands, her bare hands. She'd stopped sleeping with gloves on a decade or so back and hadn't thought to grab them on her way to answer the door and if she touched Shirley she wouldn't be able to stop herself from reading all of Shirley's emotions, taking in all of her sadness and frustration and hurt, and she had enough of those herself, thank you very much, she didn't need Shirley's added to the mix.

So instead she just grabbed the bottle tighter and said, "I'm sorry to bring this up again, but... why the hell would she go to that house?"


End file.
